Lok Sabha Speaker faces paper, slogans

Faced with a shower of paper and slogans, Speaker Om Birla adjourned the House less than a minute after it sat in the morning

Opposition MPs protest in the well of the Lok Sabha on Monday.: PTI

TT Special Correspondent   |   New Delhi   | 28.03.23 : Congress MPs on Monday wore black and tossed sheets and scraps of paper at the Lok Sabha Speaker’s Chair in protest against Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the House.

The BJP continued to accuse Rahul of “insulting OBCs, Parliament and the court”, seeking to build a counter-narrative to the Congress efforts to gain public sympathy over its leader’s disqualification.

Faced with a shower of paper and slogans, Speaker Om Birla adjourned the House less than a minute after it sat in the morning.

As the Lok Sabha met again at 4pm to approve amendments to the Finance Bill as recommended by the Rajya Sabha, slogans rang out condemning Rahul’s disqualification and demanding a joint parliamentary committee probe into the Adani controversy.

The Rajya Sabha too witnessed noisy scenes and was adjourned for the day after the passage of a few money bills.

Outside the House, the BJP fielded two ministers to continue the attacks on Rahul. The ruling party also posted videos of Congress members tossing paper at the Speaker’s Chair and blamed the Gandhi family.

“See, how democracy and (the) dignity of Parliament is (sic) being insulted for the arrogance of one family,” the BJP said on Twitter.

Addressing the media in the afternoon, commerce minister Piyush Goyal said: “By wearing black clothes and hurling papers at the Speaker’s Chair, the Congress is insulting Parliament, the temple of democracy.” He went on to portray Rahul as an arrogant dynast.

“Rahul Gandhi had the opportunity to apologise before the Surat court for insulting the OBC community but he did not do so out of arrogance.This shows the Congress leader’s hate for the OBCs,” Goyal said.

He stressed that the BJP, government and the Lok Sabha Speaker had no role in Rahul’s disqualification, an assertion being made repeatedly by the BJP, apparently afraid that it may have handed a powerful issue to the Congress and the wider Opposition.

Goyal said Rahul had stood “automatically disqualified” after the two-year jail sentence, and the Speaker was legally bound to notify his disqualification.

BJP managers said they were confident that the party’s all-out drive to portray Rahul as an “arrogant dynast” would blunt the Congress’s campaign to attract public sympathy.

“The Congress could have got Rahul’s disqualification stayed by a higher court but they did not do so in order to politically exploit the issue,” a senior BJP leader said.

“But we are confident that the Congress will not be able to gain much advantage (from Rahul’s disqualification).”